Boston Priest to Lead Vatican’s Oversight of Sexual Abuse Claims — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday named a priest from Boston, the epicenter of the sexual abuse crisis in the United States, as the Vatican’s new sex crimes prosecutor. Also known as the Vatican office of “La la la I can’t hear you, and besides it’s the fault of those sultry boys and the dirty hippies”, or for short, “Suffer the little children.” I’d be a lot more impressed with the Vatican’s efforts in this regard if anyone in the Church’s senior leadership had ever taken responsibility or accepted punishment, rather than simply being transferred out of the relevant jurisdictions.

The NRA and the positive good of maximum guns — In short, the NRA has become a neo-Confederate movement that sees Federals as foes, and that stokes the paranoia of its followers by claiming, as LaPierre did this year, that Obama’s re-election marks “the end of our freedom forever.” That’s more or less what Fire-Eaters said about Lincoln in 1860. And alongside the dominant right wing of the Evangelical movement, the NRA is pretty much the face of evil in mainstream America today.

Random Thoughts on the Ramblings of a Mad Man — Steve Buchheit says a lot of what I would have said (if my brain weren’t so fogged by illness) about the moral depravity and political insanity of Wayne LaPirere and the NRA as evidenced by Friday’s press conference. Yes, I have a bias here. My bias is people should be safe to live in peace.